Actually, it’s rich white women who are apt to be leanest. Being, white, rich and male in the US constitutes a risk factor for obesity (if I recall correctly).
2 Likes
Did you blink, PP? (Inside joke referring to a comment I once made in PP’s log.)
1 Like
I think along similar lines. I try to draw the line at observation though. By that I mean- “Whoa. she’s pretty big…” whereas some people draw all kinds of negative assumptions based on one point of observation. Like “Whoa, she’s pretty big… I bet she [insert invective here].”.
Do you know why? If so, care to tell us?
Not my area of expertise, so no, I don’t know why. Like everyone else, I have my hunches, but that’s all they are.
Yes. One of them was eating birthday cake yesterday, over 5,000 miles away from home.
1 Like
Ah, I know that feeling. My sympathies. Parenthood is bittersweet, n’est-ce pas?
1 Like
My understanding is that the classes prioritize different things:
*Lower class values quantity relative to cost - so mac n cheese, big bucket of KFC, bag of frozen pizza rolls. Weight-gainers.
*Middle (and here I mean trending affluent) values quality - they “shop the perimeter” of the grocery store and like to eat at good steakhouses, where fresh, filling food is plentiful. You can gain weight here, but you can also maintain a healthy body weight depending on choices.
*Upper (wealthy) values presentation - I have been occasionally to excellent restaurants, and I always leave hungry and a little confused. The drizzled - whatever - is lovely, but where’s the big mound of steamed broccoli? What is that top hat-shaped carb-looking item with the weed sitting atop it? And why is there so little of whatever it is? Ah, meat! Looks like a whopping 2.5 ounces of joy…
1 Like
I just shipped deodorant, razors, Cup a Soup and ramen, instant hot chocolate, Gold Fish, candy, and two Christmas-smelling candles to my son in Africa, all individually wrapped. (Sending valuables is discouraged.) It killed me dead. This is my first Christmas without him.
Fucking love, man. Why does it have to be so hard?
1 Like
I don’t disagree with you about it being essential, but I recognize that this is true for ME, not for everyone. I’m not that charitable - I mean to be, but I just sort of drift along not thinking about it very often. For some people THIS is the essential piece, giving back to the community. I have an overweight coworker who is constantly initiating work-wide efforts to help or improve one thing or another. She coordinates, she makes food, she rallies troops - it’s hard work, most of which she does on her own time - and I know she does this at church and wherever else she’s involved as well. She’s just a very good, very kind, very dedicated woman. She probably means to exercise, but drifts along not thinking about it very often because she has other things on her mind. Am I superior to her because I work out before work?
I just don’t think so.
Which isn’t to say she’s superior to me necessarily - just that we each do what’s important to us with the limited time we have.
I can’t image. My daughter is 2 and she isn’t going to date until she’s 30 largely as a result of her never being allowed to move away.
1 Like
How does the former not mean that sex, race and wealth have no correlation with weight?
Don’t have daughters… Infinitely worse. I wanted to kick a 6 year old that cut her in line…
Because it wouldn’t be worth shit if it were easy.
What it means is that the relationships are complex. There is most definitely a correlation between race and obesity, and between wealth and obesity, and between sex and obesity. But the relationships become even stronger when the data are analyzed in multifactorial fashion.
Put another way, the main effects for all these independent variables are statistically compelling, but the interactions among them are even more so.
But the data says otherwise.
Slimmest people are white wealthy women and poor black men. So the “correlation” between sex and obesity is obviously trumped by wealth. The correlation between wealth and obesity is trumped by sex, and the correlation by race is trumped by gender.
It’s like rock/paper/scissors.
You are stretching these factoids far past their breaking point. (Either that, or as you have done previously, you are messing with me.)
Neither. I’m being serious.
If I’m making a mistake (which I obviously am) walk me through it here please. But based on that statement my mind is spitting back “well that means obesity isn’t correlated or predominantly caused gender, affluence or race. So there is no point in trying to link those things if we’re to “combat” obesity”.
If I’m wrong here, walk me through it.
"Poorer women are the most likely to be obese among all ethnicities. But there are a few counter-intuitive surprises here. The richest men were, overall, more likely to be obese than the poorest groups. The groups with the lowest rates of obesity were rich white women and poor black men. Obesity rises with income for black and Hispanic men, but it falls with income for black and Hispanic women. The relationship is clearly more complicated than “a disease for poor people in a rich country.”
I’m not seeing how that doesn’t echo what I just said. Which amounts to: we can’t use race, gender or wealth to predict obesity because there isn’t a clear correlation.
I suppose if you mix those three you can start predicting, but then it is more likely to come down to cultural differences than those of the three aspects above.
For example, Black and Hispanic men gain weight with more wealth right? It could be because sedentary jobs pay more, people of Hispanic and Black origin tend to live in the south, and people in the south tend to eat richer foods. (Fuck am I jealous of sausage gravy.)
I’m not even sure we’re disagreeing here. I might just be explaining myself like shit.
Bingo. That’s the whole point–to truly understand the roles of sex, race and wealth as they pertain to obesity in the US, you have to ‘mix’ them.
That is your hunch, and you may be right. (Although ‘cultural differences’ is a rather nebulous explanation.) But it is an empirical question, and thus requires an empirical answer–which is why I told Brick above that I don’t know what that answer is. But whatever it is, knowing it might go a long way toward helping us deal with the public scourge that is obesity.
The dietary differences between south east American and north east America for example.
We (north east) just don’t eat the same rich foods the people in the south do. We have a lot boiled meals and old French (French Canadian) dishes which have almost zero flavor. I’ve gone down south (shit or even eaten in authentic Mexican restaurants, not shit hole chains with honkey’s cooking*) and I’m telling you, I would be 800lbs if I lived down there. I love good tasting food man…
That’s what I mean by cultural differences, mainly food choices, and meal traditions over the generations.
*That said the best sushi I’ve ever had was rolled by a Hispanic dude on the Cape, so… It isn’t always where you’re from that makes you a good cook of “ethnic” food.
And we have a HUGE south east Asian population where I live, so I have bomb ass Thai and Vietnamese food to choose from.